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DESIGNATED GUN HOLDER

April 20, 2015

In 2009, when Arizona allowed guns in places that served alcohol (read: bars), the owner of the gun was not allowed to drink alcohol. This is “people will do the right thing” mentality, and if you believe people do that, you haven’t been on an aircraft lately, driven on an Interstate, picked up roadside litter, or heard of Curry Todd.

Mr. Todd is a Tennessee legislator who was arrested for DUI and carrying a firearm. Todd claimed it was the prescription medicine that caused him to weave in and out of traffic, but the law reads “alcohol,” he had been drinking and taking medication, and was jailed for 48 hours. Todd repeatedly argued during a debate about the law that gun owners were responsible and would not drink while carrying a firearm. If gun owners are so responsible, why was Todd irresponsible? Why do 600 people die each year (50 shot by a child less than 6) unintentionally? Why are there more deaths due to firearms in states where there are more firearms?

Some gun owners are responsible; many are not. Indeed, 22 million Americans are estimated to have anger issues and access to guns. They don’t just get pissed off occasionally, like I do, but get skunk anger, red hot road rage sort of stuff. One doesn’t have to drink in a bar to see people who have clearly imbibed too much. Really, now. Does anybody honestly believe we will have a “designated gun owner” who doesn’t drink? Curry Todd didn’t. He was an irresponsible gun owner that night.

Let’s look at the “people will do the right thing” mentality.

At Rowe Sanctuary in Nebraska, 600,000 Lesser Sandhill Cranes, 90% of the world’s population, migrate through every spring, the greatest migration in the contiguous states, and the largest crane migration in the world. Cranes are extensively hunted, Nebraska’s being the only state/province where they are not, so they are wary of humans. The only way to see these birds close up is to be in a viewing blind where one is hidden. Stand outside, and the birds will not land near you. Try to approach the birds on foot (illegal in Nebraska; it is harassment), and they will move away. That doesn’t stop people’s trying to do it. A couple did it once and ruined one of my blind tours in 2004 over in Grand Island. The birds left.

The migration is viewed by 20,000 people at Rowe annually; I have been in the viewing blinds 110 times watching, wondering, learning, simply in awe of these birds, which may live to be 35 in the wild, are usually monogamous, and may migrate 14,000 miles roundtrip (24,000 km) each year, to nest.

A lot of people capture this migration using cameras. In the old days, there was limited time people could shoot a picture using a roll of film. Digital cameras were a game changer. At Rowe, we do not allow flashes, we tape over the automatic focuser light, and we do not allow LCD screens to be illuminated after dark. These regulations occurred because flashes may spook the birds into the air at night, where they may collide with power lines and die. Flashes don’t work at photographic infinite distance. Automatic focusers may be seen a mile away. LCD screens reflect off the face and are visible out on the river.

Before these regulations, we had banned automatic firing of the shutter, because the migration is an auditory and visual experience. Even a rapid use of a manual shutter detracts from the experience. We don’t allow lenses or any object to be outside the plane of the outer wall, because the birds will likely perceive the object as a rifle. Tripods are not allowed in the corner of a blind, because they take up space for three or four windows. In a dark viewing blind, more than one person has tripped over a tripod, sometimes the owner, who has also been known to drop lenses. As a guide, I have seen every camera violation there is. Some people become irate when I ask them to move the lens inside the blind. Glad one didn’t have a gun.

Photography has become an issue among the volunteer guides. Some think we ought to ban it outright, the way some museums do. I don’t have a problem with photography, so long as the birds’ safety is not compromised. I like to take pictures, but I don’t need the perfect picture: I want to show pictures to people so that they may understand the beauty that is in this world, seek out this beauty, and work to keep these special places…..special.

What would happen if Rowe Sanctuary had no regulations? Nobody would be viewing the cranes, because people would be walking up and down the river. People would pitch tents, promise to be quiet, wouldn’t be, leaving human waste and a mess, because people do those things. People can’t be trusted not to throw trash into a composting toilet at a trailhead on Oregon Route 58 by Mt. Hardesty, despite a sign in the restroom telling them not to do it. Go see, if you don’t believe me. How difficult would it have been to have taken the trash back home?

Without regulations, we would have blinds full of tripods, large equipment, flashes, automatic focusing lights, automatic shutter speed, 8000 pictures in one two hour session (yes, a man once bragged to me that he had done that) the birds would be spooked, and the blinds become worthless. But hey, got to have that one good picture that one can sell, put on Facebook, put it on one’s Web page, be a famous person.

Fact is that photographers failed to regulate themselves, so we regulate them to protect the migration. We have rules about noise, how many may go to a blind, how they must enter, leave, and conduct themselves. Left alone, people don’t do the right thing. Remember Curry Todd.

If people did the right thing, we wouldn’t need speed limits. We wouldn’t have litter along roads, we wouldn’t have signs shot at, we wouldn’t have scams, NINJA mortgages, the SEC, insider trading, derivatives that nobody understood, worthless supplements declared off limits for FDA regulation, thanks to conservative Orrin Hatch of Utah, need to regulate lasers shot into the air which blind pilots, or drones over important air space.

I don’t want a nanny state, a government that takes over every stage of a person’s life. When people effectively self-regulate, we won’t need laws. If people just voted right, we wouldn’t elect people like Curry Todd, who is still serving.

Unopposed. I’m speechless.

Tags:General writing, Philosophy
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YOU SHOULD HAVE SEEN

April 14, 2015

In the video that every visitor to Rowe Sanctuary must see, before they go to the viewing blinds, Bill Taddicken, the Executive Director, calls “You Should Have Seen” the four saddest words in the language.

It’s interesting, because the first two, “You should,” bother me enough that I almost never use them to others. “Should” connotes advice, and many don’t like it. Me, too. I actually try to follow some advice I’m given, but there is not enough time in my life to do everything “should” expects from me.

But Bill’s four words are powerful. You Should Have Seen. I capitalize them, in order to emphasize that rather than annoyance, failure on my part, or unwanted advice, YOU SHOULD HAVE SEEN is a statement of what a situation was once like, before it changed for the worse and the opportunity was never again available.

Bill uses two examples: YOU SHOULD HAVE SEEN THE BUFFALO MIGRATION, not stating the obvious, that we nearly exterminated this magnificent creature, a hundred million animals, in the 19th century by shooting them from trains, for sport, and letting the animals die a horrible death and rot on the prairie. This is a sad commentary on America. Bill doesn’t say that. I do. I would have loved to have seen the buffalo migration, to have studied it, to have learned from it.

YOU SHOULD HAVE SEEN THE PASSENGER PIGEONS, before stating they went extinct in 1914, the year my father was born. This beautiful bird used to fly in dark clouds that blackened the sky, extending for miles. I can only imagine the view. I am angry my forebears exterminated this bird, and I never got to see it. I can understand how the next generation is angry with mine, for the species we have allowed to become extinct.

Bill doesn’t want his daughter to have to tell her children, YOU SHOULD HAVE SEEN THE SANDHILL CRANE MIGRATION, because in the name of jobs, crops, recreation, sending water elsewhere, we took away the habitat the cranes needed along the Central Flyway of the US, where the cranes migrated for ten thousand years, after the last glaciation. Bill is fighting for the River, the Flyway, the Bird, and the Migration, one of two great ones here; the other, the Porcupine Caribou, is much more difficult to see. The Sandhill Crane migration can be seen six miles from Interstate 80 in Nebraska. For $25, one can spend 2 hours in a viewing blind and see something that Jane Goodall calls one of the great ten sights in Nature.

Right in the middle of the USA.

People get transformed by the cranes. Some cry. Couples hold hands. Some kiss, in a way they may not have for a long time. Some stare, eyes fixed on the scene in front of them, people whom I watch, but leave alone, for the people are spellbound. For them, this is not just a bunch of birds, it has become what some call a sacred place.

I’m not advising anybody to see the cranes. I was often asked in Arizona, where some cranes winter, why I just didn’t go there to see them. I replied that I’ve seen them in Nebraska. I’ve seen the full migration first hand. I once took videos. Got one when it was becoming really dark, cranes flying in circles coming towards me in the viewing blind, where I was alone. The sound was so loud, the birds so close, that I said, easily heard on the video, “I have never seen anything like this in my whole life.”

You should have seen my face.

Took another video of a pair of cranes courting, in the Platte River. Each put a bill into the river, and they both pivoted around their bills and around each other. Wow. You should have seen it.

Sandhill cranes, Nebraska, 2010

Sandhill Cranes, 2015, Nebraska

You should have seen the Boundary Waters, before the water became undrinkable in 2020 and the loons disappeared because a sulfide mine brought JOBS to the region. The mine failed, the company went bankrupt and couldn’t clean up the water. They were sorry. Couldn’t find a politician that year in the state who claimed they supported the mine. Sure could in 2010.

Lake Insula sunset, 2009.

You should have seen the corn yields in Nebraska before the Ogallala Aquifer was polluted by oil in 2023 and corn ceased to be a crop. Keystone thought the leak was “An Act of God.” They are now bankrupt and express “regret”. None of the 62 senators who originally voted for Keystone will comment on the Ogallala. Nebraska voted Democratic in the 2024 election, but the outmigration allowed them only 3 electoral votes.

You should have seen the Grand Canyon, before the Republican Senate decided that the states should own all the federal land, and privatization allowed mining. I remember back in ‘85 when my wife and I were camped out on the Tonto Platform below the Abyss, hearing the flap of a Raven’s wings echoing off the Redwall. You should have heard it. You should have seen it.

The Abyss, Grand Canyon, 2012. Tonto Platform is to the right.

You should have seen the Aral Sea, before it disappeared in the latter part of the 20th century. Nobody seemed to care.

You should have seen the Brooks Range of Alaska, when one could be 300 miles from the nearest town, days from civilization, before the road that paralleled it was built in 2025, so that Native Americans could drive to Fairbanks to shop. The Natives seldom used the road, but miners and hunters have, and now the natives are destitute. You should have seen the bears I saw on the Noatak in 2010, the sow with 2 cubs and a second year male, marching through our camp one night like we weren’t even there. They had likely never seen humans.

Grizzly Cubs, Noatak River, 2010

You should have seen Churchill, Manitoba in the autumn, before climate change that we were told wasn’t took away all the pack ice and the animals are now only found in zoos. Past president Ted Cruz still claims that “he wasn’t a scientist,” and that he was using the best available evidence when he denied global warming was occurring. You should have seen me nose to nose with a polar bear in 1992, 15 inches separating us.

You should have seen the Whooping Crane before they finally went extinct in 2060. I saw nearly ten in my lifetime.

You should have seen the Harris Sparrow in central Nebraska. They became extinct ten years later. I saw them.

We still have time. But not much. You should have seen how Americans came together and fixed the environment in the 21st century. That’s what I want to hear before I die.

Tags:Alaska hiking and pictures, Canoe Trips
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THEY’LL GO ELSEWHERE

April 10, 2015

I was speaking with an intelligent woman staff member at Rowe Sanctuary about the work they are doing, protecting a key part of the Sandhill Crane migration, the stopover on the Platte River the cranes take every six weeks from late February to mid-April. The cranes are on their way north from the southern US and northern Mexico, and they refuel, rest, court, and spend 2-4 weeks in south central Nebraska, on the Great Bend of the Platte River. They’ve been doing this migration for 9000 years, since the end of the last glaciation.

This habitat is critical. There is waste corn in the fields, although before corn, the cranes came to wetlands here, where there were crustaceans and other invertebrates, rodents and other animals they could eat. They would fly to the shallow Platte, full of sandbars, for safety at night, for cranes have a vestigial hind foot and cannot perch in trees away from predators. The water makes it difficult for predators to approach without splashing announcing their presence. Cranes live in three dimensions: ground, river, and sky.

Their habitat once spanned 200 miles of river, and cranes could be found anywhere there each spring. But dams were built and irrigation began, channeling the river. Invasive plants arrived, along with water guzzling cottonwoods, producing shade, but also allowing brush to fill in the river, making it less safe for cranes. In 1975, a water diversion project planned would have completely dried up the river and the habitat. It failed, but today, the habitat for the cranes in March is perhaps 50 miles of river, and only a few miles is totally protected. The rest of it is hit or miss for the birds. They may find a safe place, they may not. We estimate 90% of their total habitat has been lost.

I’m pessimistic what the a warming climate and uncontrollable population will do to the migration. In the name of jobs, because we aren’t going to decrease our population voluntarily in my lifetime, we will require more food, more fresh water, more living space, and put more demands upon all our resources. Fresh water is the oil of the 21st century, and the Platte is a huge supplier of fresh water to the central US. Underneath the river and well away from it lies the billion acre feet of the Ogallala Aquifer, fresh water that can be accessed underground. The aquifer is a national treasure, yet we are risking the Ogallala in the name of building a pipeline to ship dirty, carbon intensive oil abroad, in order to make more carbon released in burning it. Oil vs. water.

What if water in the Platte goes for other uses, in the name of jobs? Well, I have been told, the cranes will have to adapt. “They’ll go elsewhere.” Really? Where? They’ve been coming here, longer than human recorded history. They can’t adapt to “going elsewhere.” They are cranes, not technologically advanced individuals capable of altering the environment.

“The climate has always changed.” Indeed, it has. And species come and go, but they have come and gone over thousands of years. We are changing the environment in a matter of a few generations, not over thousands of years, which animals require to adapt.

“They will be fine.” Really? That is rationalization, wishful thinking. No, the birds won’t be fine. They will go extinct. And then what? For the cranes to “go elsewhere” is like my telling humanity right now that we have a century to find “another planet,” because this one won’t be livable. It can’t be done, and the cranes can’t find another river, another flyway. There isn’t one. And by the way, I am dead right. We have a century. No more.

I told the young woman that I had no children, no skin in this game, and once I was gone, it wouldn’t be my problem. She disagreed, stating that my presence as a volunteer meant that I DID have skin in this game, that I felt it mattered to be here. Yes, she was right. It does matter to me.

She additionally mentioned how young people of today are angry at the world they are being left. They should be. I was left a world after two wars, with enough conflicts that during my young life. I served in the military, visiting countries abroad in uniform, not the way the young do today, traveling freely, learning other languages, being connected with people all over the world on social media. I survived.

To the younger generation, I will do my best to contribute my skills to make the environment better. They must do the rest. They need to get out into this natural environment, not see it on Facebook, play video games on cruises through Kenai Fjords, not look at wild fruit as “yucky,” and not tweet, call, or instant message their parents or friends about their adventures in wild country. When people see my pictures and ask where I got them on the Internet, I say, I took them. I WAS THERE.

We are not as far removed from our ties to nature as many might believe. A number of studies have stated how disconnection from nature makes us unhappier, not happier. We have one advantage over cranes that can’t go elsewhere. We alone can manipulate our environment. We can deal with greenhouse gases, we can figure out ways to avoid or mitigate ocean rise and de-alkalinzation, continued loss of coral species, and an Anthropocene where Earth has far fewer species of animals.

We have reached a time where we can continue on our present path, and when a species can’t go elsewhere, it dies out. One of those species will some day be us, should we continue. We can assume we are above the rest of the biosphere and pretend the world isn’t changing. Or, we can assume we alone can change our environment, need to and start acting. We can keep denying, and nature will respond. Biology will respond to changes in physics and chemistry, not to Jim Inhofe, Ted Cruz, and those of my detractors who have been wrong on the climate. Not one of them, not one conservative think tank can change those laws, no matter how sharp a speaker looks, speak, or tries to debate what is no longer, and never was debatable.

I won’t be around to see much of this. If the coming generations don’t channel their understandable anger into fixing things, fail to realize that in saving the environment and nature is not a matter of cutsy sayings or “like”s on Facebook, but science, understanding nature, getting out into nature, demanding, working to reverse the damage that has been done, they won’t be around, either.

It’s time to get connected. With nature. Without electronics.

Tags:General writing, National Park Odyssey
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DE-JADING MYSELF

April 8, 2015

It’s easy to become jaded when dealing with the public. I became jaded in medicine, although to be fair to my patients, long hours, lack of sleep, frequent interruptions and hurry had a lot to do with my frame of mind.

I volunteer serving the public each spring when I go to Rowe Sanctuary in Nebraska to help visitors see the Sandhill Crane Migration, one of the great sights in nature. I am one of maybe 120 volunteers, most of whom live in the surrounding area, but easily a dozen or more of us are from out of state. They stay longer than I. Many have no pets, no children, and can leave a house alone for a long period of time. They come to Rowe for 2-3 weeks during the 5 week crane season and find their niche. I come for 10 days at most, maybe less, depending upon other commitments, and I don’t fit easily into a niche.

I’m not much of a birder, although I love Sandhill Cranes. I don’t know Nebraska like many of the volunteers, who either live here or grew up here. I can’t advise people about certain towns that I have never been to, wetlands that I haven’t visited, birding areas I may never see. I’m not good with my hands, so I help if I can, but construction projects around the place are better left to others more skilled. I have learned to drive an ATV, so I deliver people who go overnight to photography blinds, with all their gear, and contribute a little. While my trailer backing skills are not great, I can fill in and do the work. I learned.

I can do menial but necessary things like clean toilets and mop floors. I can sweep outside and pick up trash. I drive vehicles into town for supplies. I feel most at home, however, taking visitors to viewing blinds. I become a different person when I teach, for I know cranes, I have been in each of the viewing blinds in all weather conditions, with many others or alone. I’ve seen a lot, but I still learn something new every time I go in.

This past year, Rowe staff developed a video that they play at each tour’s onset, explaining the mission and the rules of the Sanctuary. This is a good idea, which will get better with modification. It is important to standardize the rules of the Sanctuary and to impart certain basic information. The video, however, took away one of my few strengths, my standing in front of 30 people going to a viewing blind, where it might be cold, hot, wet or dry, and convey, with enthusiasm and clarity, that they were going to have a special time, because I knew I would. I would tell them that the cranes are one of the top sites in nature for me. I told them I would learn something new, because I learn something from every visit to the blinds, about people, birds, or myself. I would then take them to the blinds, apologizing for my lack of enthusiasm. They laughed. I was in my element. My tours went well, and I believe many visitors were happy. At least I think they were.

Crane

Now, my connection is replaced by a video. I’ve lost some of my only niche, connecting initially with the visitors. Once in the blinds, I want to be quiet, unless there are questions. People ought to experience the cranes on their own, not have a play by play. I want to state my love for the Platte River, the need to conserve this area, the Central Flyway, and to support Rowe. Last two years, I had staff from Audubon Nebraska on my tour and was told I asked for support in exactly the right way. Of course I did. I was teaching, I knew what I had to teach, and I understood the material completely. It was like my teaching high school geometry or algebra, a piece of cake.

On my fourth trip in to the blinds this current season, now having been in one more than a hundred times, we had a good group on a sunny, warmish evening, including a young boy of 12. While waiting for the cranes to come in, we saw nine deer and several wild turkeys. The boy was clearly interested in all and asked about the reflectors on power lines that spanned the Platte. It was a good observation, and I told him so. The reflectors have cut in half the number of cranes dying from power line collisions. He was engaged in everything. I told him I heard a pheasant near the east end of the blind, and while he might not see it, he might take a look. He went.

About half way through the tour, the cranes began landing where sunlight was reflecting off the river. I made a comment to everybody, “Cranes are now on the river,” a signal we now needed to be quiet.

“Did somebody text you and tell you?” a woman asked.

“No,” I replied, “I saw them.”

The tour went well, the world on the Platte’s unfolding as it should. We saw thousands of cranes land, they moved downstream, walked and flew past the blind, bathing, dancing, drinking, preening, doing things cranes do. The sunset was lovely, the tricolor sky beautiful. At 8:30, we began to leave. I went by the young boy and his mother. The boy looked at me with his brown eyes, saying:

“This has been the best day of my life. This was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. I am coming here every year for the rest of my life.

“How do I volunteer here?”

I was no longer jaded. I had let the show of the cranes devolve into a show I was giving, taking people to the blinds. I had made the mistake of thinking I mattered. Well, I did matter, a little, but the cranes mattered. The river mattered. The flyway mattered. Nature mattered. My job was simply to take people to nature, to be on the flyway, be by the river and see the cranes. By doing that job, and doing it well, I offered the possibility to people—this night, a 12 year-old boy—that an experience in life may be transformative, changing their world forever. Life won’t be the same.

In short, it was about a young boy, a bird called a Sandhill crane, a migration, and a river. Nothing else. Nothing more.

Nothing more was completely enough.

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TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE TRIP OF 2015

April 2, 2015

I make it a point to know eclipse dates and locations well in advance. We eclipse chasers do that sort of thing. I knew about the eclipse in 2015 for at least a decade. I knew it would likely require a plane to see it, since nearly the entire path was over the North Atlantic and high Arctic. Only the Faeroe Islands and Svalbard were occupied land masses in the path.

With that in mind, we decided to book an eclipse flight out of Düsseldorf, with eclipse-reisen.de. I went with them last year to Uganda. They know me, and I can book the flight in German. We decided to tie the tour into a visit to Germany and to see Berlin, which I, as a child of the Cold War, had always wanted to see. We would also visit Dresden and then return to Düsseldorf, take a side visit to the Köln Church and then take the eclipse flight, before coming home. Eclipse trips allow one to see well-known places or not so well-known, depending upon the eclipse location.

Eclipses of the Sun must occur at least twice a year. If the alignment is right, and the Moon is close to us, we see a total eclipse. If the Moon is further away, but the alignment is right, we see a ring eclipse, with the Moon “inside” the Sun. With less than perfect alignment, we see a partial eclipse, like we did last October.

Take a flashlight, and turn it on in a dark room. There is a bright cone of light in the center. Outside of that, the cone of light is a little dimmer. Eclipses are the same with darkness. Be in the center of the shadow of the Moon, and it is dark. Outside the shadow, it is lighter. Without going into too many details, there are 40 eclipse families currently occurring every 18 years and 10 1/3 days. The Saros cycle, the word coined by Edmund Halley, is a corruption of an ancient Babylonian word, which meant about 3600 years. Ancient people understood the cycle. About a third of the families generate partial eclipses, another third annular, or ring eclipses, where a small amount of sunlight is visible, and the final third total. There are 13 total eclipses during this 18 year period. Each family is born, lives, and dies, with about 70-80 cycles over 1200 to 1500 years. The cycles themselves are a combination of 223 synodic lunar cycles (the familiar “month”), lining up of the Earth-Moon-Sun, 242 cycles, and the Moon’s being close enough to the Earth to cover the Sun, 239 cycles.’

I’m trying not to give too many details, but sometimes my enthusiasm slips out.

It’s a shame that my enthusiasm wasn’t present earlier in my life. On 20 July 1963, I canoed in Canada and missed a total eclipse, seeing 91% partial from Algonquin Park. Nearly 7 years later, I missed totality again, by not going to Nova Scotia, saw a 94% partial eclipse. Almost a decade later, I missed totality during the American-Canadian eclipse of 1979, skiing near Salt Lake City, seeing a 91% partial eclipse. Perhaps had I been aware of the fact this was the last total eclipse to strike the contiguous states for 38 years, I might have been more eager to drive to Montana to see it.

This most recent eclipse is a member of the same family that last brought the umbra of the Moon’s shadow over on America. Eighteen years and 10 or 11 1/3 days later (leap year, dateline and midnight considerations) this particular eclipse family repeated, same type of track, in this case the right side of a “U”, either north or south of the prior (this instance north), and 1/3 of the way west around the world. The American-Canadian eclipse of 1979 became the Siberian eclipse of 1997, the North Atlantic eclipse of 2015, and will become the Siberia- Alaska eclipse in 2033, the last total eclipse of this family. I did see the Siberia eclipse in 9 March 1997, along with about 60 others, and not too many other people. The American eclipse on 21 August 2017 will be a repeat of the family I saw in Ontario in 1963.

All of Europe enjoyed some degree of partial eclipse, but partial eclipses are not total. The concept was lost on me for many years, when I had said “I have seen an eclipse.” I had, but not a total eclipse. A woman in Hamburg, Germany, posted on Facebook why she saw a fat crescent and her friend in the Faeroes saw briefly (through clouds) totality. For eclipses, 99% partial is not total and that 99.9% is also not total. An individual understands this statement once totality has been seen. Eclipses are nature’s way of telling us that time and place matter. I’ve heard many say, “You can see it later,” when no, we can’t see it later. We place ourselves on the track the day before if possible, and look for good viewing spots. When the Moon’s shadow no longer covers us, we can’t chase it down again.

The advantage of seeing an eclipse by air is planes can fly above clouds, which cover much eclipse tracks, including the North Sea in March. Additionally, planes may fly along the eclipse track at a quarter of the Moon’s shadow’s speed, allowing one to see a longer eclipse.

The disadvantage of seeing eclipses from the air are the lack of the ability to see the subtle changes as the Moon covers the Sun, the approach of the shadow, and the last part of the eclipse, although not many care to watch the last part of an eclipse. My wife and I think it is our personal obligation to nature.

Another problem with seeing an eclipse from the air is that windows get frost. I’ve seen three from the air, and only over very dry Antarctica, was the window completely frost-free. In 2008, we had a great deal of ice, from too vigorous cleaning of the window by well-meaning individuals who left water in the window well. At 11,000 meters elevation, it is cold, and water freezes to the window. This time, we had smaller amounts, that while not affecting our visual viewing, did affect quality of pictures. I was able to remove a lot of the artifact, but not all. Finally, it is difficult for two people to look out an airplane window at the same time.

The latter brings me to viewing an eclipse. I try to take pictures and shoot video. But equipment fails, falls out of focus, or is on a moving platform, such as a ship or a turbulent plane. The most important thing for an eclipse viewer is to see it. Each eclipse is a little different; each has the same pattern. Each stays in my mind in some fashion. I don’t know in what way it will, only that something will strike me as special.

I will always remember the diamond ring with this eclipse, the last bit of sunlight before totality. As the Moon covers more of the Sun, making it a smaller crescent, eventually the edge of the Moon, not perfectly round, but containing mountains and valleys, allows sunlight to pass only through valleys between the mountains. These are called Bailey’s Beads. Finally, one valley is left, allowing sunlight to pass through, showing a dark disk with brilliant light. I will also remember the beautiful gossamer-thin corona, and the large prominence on the Sun, which normally I miss. I saw Venus, by accident, because I don’t look for planets near the eclipsed Sun. Venus was impossible to miss.

Crescent Sun, just before the eclipse

Another view of eclipsed Sun.

Eclipsed Sun with Moon’s shadow overhead.

Most eclipse chasers know how many they have seen. A few of us know how many seconds we have been under the Moon’s shadow. One thousand is a milestone. An hour is a huge milestone. Another milestone is seeing the same eclipse family twice, which means 18 years and 10 or 11 days later. To me, one of the nicest milestones is seeing somebody I met on a prior one. This trip, a German flight, was no exception. There were several familiar faces, my roommate from the Uganda trip, and people I had seen in 2008 and 2010. I have gone on several trips where I was certain I would never see anybody I had seen before, only to be pleasantly surprised. After 24 eclipse trips, this sort of thing happens. It is nice.

Oh, I am just shy of 45 minutes under the Moon’s shadow.

Tags:Total Solar eclipses
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WHO NAMED THE STARS?

March 28, 2015

I had just finished the last of six shows in the planetarium my first day as a volunteer at the Science Factory, a hands on museum for children, right down MLK from my house. I had given six shows, three each of a different topic. While the shows and my explanations had been good, I realized how much I had to learn as a volunteer, and I was tired. As the last family left the dome, their 4 year-old daughter looked at me and made my day:

“Who named the stars?”

My fatigue vanished. A 4 year-old had just asked me a question. She didn’t just ask me a question, she asked a dynamite one.

That in itself is not surprising, because children are naturally curious, until they keep hearing, “Be polite, don’t bother the man,” or “don’t know, go away.” She asked, because she wanted to know, and it’s a cinch her parents didn’t know. I think I understood why the Science Factory wanted planetarium volunteers who knew amateur astronomy. So, who named the stars?

I bent down to her level, and said, “What a great question that is!!” Then I answered it: “The ancient Arabs, Greeks and Persians named the stars.” I didn’t get into the reasons they did: these people were desert dwellers, had no electricity, and light pollution occurred only with the Moon or a campfire. The nights were dark. Small wonder that they knew the sky well. The ancient Jews knew the Moon’s irregular phase cycle to within 2 minutes. The Saros cycle for eclipses, a repeat of a similar eclipse every 18 years and 10 or 11 1/3 days, was known 3000 years ago.

“Mommy, I want to come back here in summer and learn more names of the stars.” I hope I am doing planetarium shows that day.

I looked in the main room and saw an 18-month old girl trying to reach a door handle. She didn’t know what it was, but she saw it, and she wanted to figure it out. Kids run wild in that room. That is why the museum works. Kids need to look at how things recycle, how gravity works, how colors mix, where the lizard is in the terrarium, how we can make optical illusions, and what orbital velocity requires.

When I ask at the outset of a talk whether anybody has questions, they are invariably from children. The questions are good. When I was a docent at Kitt Peak in 1986, a junior high school student asked me what a parsec was. Impressive. It is the distance of a star from us with parallax of a star one arc second. In other words, a star viewed six months apart in the Earth’s orbit appears to have moved, just like your thumb appears to jump when you close first one eye and then the other. The closest other star to the Sun is 1.3 parsecs. Great question.

Young viewer of the Sandhill Crane migration, Kearney, Nebraska, 2012.
Two great sights: the migration, and seeing a young person enthralled with nature.

I was lucky. My curiosity was fostered by my parents. I listened to my brother ask so many questions at the dinner table that finally my father told him to ask only three. Great idea. Small wonder my brother became a superb grant writer. He learned to ask good questions; because grants are difficult to obtain, the better the question, the more likelihood of success.

I wasn’t as good as my brother, but I grew up curious. In kindergarten, I asked the teacher, “What does ‘Proceed with Caution’ mean?” When children weren’t able to read, she was impressed I could. I still remember her name, I still have her report cards from 1954, and I was once chided by her: “Mr. Smith, we do not say goddamn in my kindergarten.”

Precocity with some words is not always valued.

Often, I don’t answer the questions but let the children find out by watching the show or doing an experiment. I’ve shown more than one child the Sun through a solar filter, and hear them say, “It looks like the Moon.” Yep, it does. That’s why we can have solar eclipses. I showed one girl Jupiter one night, and she asked about the dots near it. She had just discovered the Galilean Moons, as surely as Galileo had.

The following day, I spoke about solar eclipses to OLLI, the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. This was a tough audience of retirees. I figured I would get a couple of questions I didn’t know the answer, and I did. I also got mildly chastised by a man who did not understand the concept of protecting the eyes from sunlight during the partial phases of eclipses. To me, the concept is easy. He didn’t understand it until after I explained in great detail how the Sun’s rays damage the retina. He finally said, “OK, why didn’t you say that?” That’s a tough group.

I also learned I didn’t explain the concept of eclipse families well, because several asked me at the break. I had the ephemeris and showed them the eclipses of 1997, 2015, and 2033. Then I showed them 1991, 2009, and 2027. They understood. Sure, there were one or two asleep while I talked, and a few looked bored, but that happens. When I took some out to view the Sun through filters, they were thrilled. Without my speaking, they saw a large sunspot and noted the Sun was the same apparent size as the Moon.

I was concerned that I had gone through the material too quickly, but this group of adults has been lifelong learners for a reason, and that reason is curiosity. They were curious as kids, and they never stopped being kids. I opened the floor to questions, and I no longer had to worry about finishing too early. Great questions, too.

The interesting thing about adults in these situations is that some drop the fears they have about asking questions, the embarrassment, the feeling they are being impolite, and revert to being a kid, asking questions when they don’t know. I love teaching in that situation. Some of the questions make me think, so I learn, too. I watch their eyes shine in a way that perhaps they haven’t shined for years, because for too long they felt it was impolite to question or were afraid it was dumb. Some took it to the next level by asking followup questions. Kids, of course, are naturals at doing this.

The little girl got me thinking—I used to know the names of over 100 stars. I just went through the sky with my eyes closed and can still do 60. I’ve got work to do. That girl may be back, and I sure don’t want to disappoint her. If I can get everything in the Big Dipper and Pegasus-Andromeda right, the southern stars in Canis Major, and a few others, I’ll be ready.

There is only one dumb question, asking one that was just answered when you weren’t listening.

Tags:General writing, Philosophy
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MOSTLY BY CHANCE

March 22, 2015

I hadn’t seen Christiaan since the 2010 eclipse, when a few of us got really, really lucky in Patagonia, Argentina. We had a tour that had chartered a flight to see the eclipse, since July is winter in the Southern Hemisphere, and it is almost always cloudy at 50 degrees south latitude. The flight was cancelled, ostensibly for “maintenance issues,” which none of us believed, and we thought we would never successfully see the eclipse from the ground. Instead, we saw the most spectacular total eclipse I have seen, and I’ve seen fifteen.

Christiaan, along with some others on the trip, befriended me on Facebook. Like most of my Facebook friends, I didn’t expect to ever meet him, except that he does chase eclipses. He lives in Amsterdam, and while we were in Germany, before the 2015 eclipse flight, he happened to message me on Facebook, asking whether we were staying at the Sheraton by the Düsseldorf airport. I was, and he gave me his room number.

Things are things, people are busy, and he was on the other of the two eclipse flights. I decided I really should call him after the eclipse, our last night there. I’m not the greatest people person, but I called, and we talked for a while. It wasn’t clear to me whether he wanted to continue the conversation. In the US, I have long been known when people didn’t want to talk to me. In Europe, the culture is different. In any case, I ended the conversation, since his eclipse group was having dinner together, and my wife and I planned to take the train into Düsseldorf and eat at a restaurant we liked when we had arrived ten days earlier.

Later, we decided instead to eat at the airport, a short walk, where we knew a good restaurant. Mostly by chance, I thought since we would go by the bar in the hotel, on the spur of the moment gave Christiaan a call, asking him if he had a chance to stop by and say hi. I wasn’t sure it was the right thing to do, but it seemed like a good opportunity to at least try. The worst that could happen was we wouldn’t meet. Ten minutes after we arrived, I saw a tall young man and a young woman appear, guessing correctly, as it turned out it might be Christiaan and his girlfriend. We had a delightful visit, despite being from different parts of the world, different cultures, and different generations. We are fellow eclipse chasers. It would have been easy not to have gone to the effort to call, but I’m glad I did. I may or may not see Christiaan on another eclipse trip; it is highly unlikely I will see him in Europe again. But I saw him. That mattered.

TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE, 20 MARCH 2015, OVER THE NORTH ATLANTIC. SAROS 120.

Quite by accident, later that evening, after dinner, I decided to go and use the free wifi the hotel had only in the lobby. I had posted something on Facebook in German, only to discover a grammar mistake. I decided I would take the post down altogether. I should do that more on Facebook.

While at the computer, I heard a conversation about two people, one of whom I know. His first name is uncommon; I don’t often refer to people by their full names in this blog, so I will call him Stanley. The man talking was an editor of an astronomy magazine, with whom I have been on at least two eclipse trips and may see in Indonesia for the 2016 eclipse. He said that Stanley, now in a wheelchair, could be photoshopped into a group picture the other eclipse flight had taken.

Stanley is not a close friend but a man whom I greatly respect. He lives in Tucson and has chased eclipses at least ten years before I started in 1991. In 1984, he spoke at the Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association (TAAA) about the 99+% annular eclipse on the East Coast. He said it had really been worth seeing. I hadn’t. He talked about the earlier Java total eclipse, then showed a map of total eclipses that would take place between then and 2002. “That’s my vacation schedule,” he said, and everybody laughed. He wasn’t kidding.

Stanley went to eclipses to possibly miss them, standing near the predicted edge to see if he saw it or didn’t. That is a scientist. I want to see every second of totality. In 1987, I was with him at Tucson Mall, when the TAAA had a booth during a fair. He showed a video of the annular eclipse in China, back when travel to China or videos were both uncommon. He once climbed one of the Aleutians in pouring rain to try to see totality. He failed but was philosophical about it.

Stanley is quiet. For years, I went to a Christmas party given by a fellow amateur who is the opposite. As I did less astronomical observation, I knew fewer and fewer people. Stanley always came, and I knew I could talk to him about eclipses as common ground. He had been to St. Helena twice, a remote island group well off southern Africa. I once asked him how many eclipse trips he had been on. He told me 38, and that was a while back. Stanley never bragged. The last time I saw him, he was 79 and looked great.

I don’t know why he is in a wheelchair. Had I been a different person, I might have walked over and asked the editor about Stanley. It didn’t seem appropriate. Stanley might not have known me well; I am not a fixture in the eclipse community. he is.

The individual hosting the Christmas parties once told me, that my eclipse chasing wasn’t “real astronomy.” I didn’t argue, for he was one with whom one just never argued. I think looking up at the night sky is astronomy, and seeing the Sun disappear in daylight qualifies as well. I’ve published three articles about how astronomy has affected my life, one in Astronomy; two were in Sky and Telescope.

Perhaps I’m not a real astronomer. But I’ve traveled all over the world chasing the Moon’s shadow. Stanley is one of my heroes, a good man. I’m sorry he is in a wheelchair and hope that in his early 80s now, it is temporary. The odds don’t favor that. Nevertheless, he saw the 2015 eclipse. I hoped he loved it. I hope others got to hear some of his wisdom that he imparted to me. I’m a better person for knowing him.

I’m glad that night I went to the hotel lobby twice.

Mostly by chance.

Tags:Total Solar eclipses
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THE DOGS OF WAR

March 21, 2015

I needed to see Dresden. The Stammtisch group I attend Tuesday nights in Eugene recommended I see it, for it is a beautiful rebuilt city. The beauty wasn’t the primary reason I went there, however, although I was not disappointed. The fact the city was rebuilt after the February 1945 firebombing did interest me. I expected to see a lot of memorials in the city.

The only memorial I saw was outside of Frauen Kirche, on a piece of rubble. There was a plaque with a comment by a man who had walked through the “dead city” on 15 February 1944, witnessing the final collapse of the dome. Those monuments is where I remove my hat, as I did when I went into the rebuilt Frauen Kirche. I am not religious, but I lit a candle and wrote in the guest book “Gedenke für die Opfern Februar 1945.” Dresden didn’t need to be bombed. I say that, not in hindsight, but because even before and during the raids, many Allies questioned the need to bomb it. Much industry was outside the city, a cultural center, and many fleeing the Soviet Army passed through Dresden.

I walked throughout the new and old cities, and when my wife and I went to dinner the last night, I again looked up in the sky, as I had many times, and wondered what it must have been like the night of 13 February 1945, when there were so many bombers that when they were first spotted, it was described as a giant dog was about to swallow the city.

It was worse than being swallowed. The city was burned to the ground.

We walked through a square and stopped by a raised area, which had an opening for underground parking. I almost missed it. I saw writing on the concrete that was part of the barrier. This didn’t appear to be a monument. But I was certain I saw some writing. I was correct. I then read what was on it. Translated, the last sentence was poignant: “War went out from Germany to the rest of the world and came back to our city.”

Here, 6685 bodies were cremated. Most of them had already been burned in the firestorm, so this was really a second, final cremation. The dogs of war had been let loose in the world, and war had returned with a vengeance. The people did not blame the Allies for bombing Dresden. The statement simply stated that war had begun here, had spread from here, and had come back here in spades. I needed to read that. It mattered that there was an acknowledgment of war. It mattered that the people actually wrote it on a monument, not without controversy, for there was some, but they did write it. Indeed, it matters as much as the fact that there was a resistance museum, for it is clear that people did protest what was happening. They were shouted down, attacked, deported and murdered. The lucky ones fled.

I thought it ironic that a right-wing group had held a rally here the night before, including an American flag with “US go home” painted on it. Dresden had been shut down by demonstrations earlier in that month, and more were planned. The right wing wants its way; most of us do. The difference is I’m willing to look for solutions, willing to give, but not willing to always give in. The right wing I know has to have everything their way. The right wing in Germany forced their way in the 1930s, and almost brought down civilization. The right wing in the US had incredibly gone around the President’s back and told Iran that any deal negotiated by the US would be null and void after the next election. Had Congress done that to the prior president, they would have been labelled traitors.

Additionally, inviting the Israeli prime minister to speak in front of Congress, and is coming, was a massive breach of protocol, torpedoes hopes of negotiation of Iran, frankly boorish, and incredibly stupid, since the senator who wrote this letter was later quoted as saying the Iranians were “in control of Tehran,” as if the capital of the country were somewhere else. I may not be a US Senator, but I know what and where Tehran is. I correspond with several people who live there or who have escaped from there to other countries.

I find it astounding that a country where balancing the budget is given so much press and so little effort to do what could easily—yes, easily be done—is actually considering unleashing the dogs of war on a country three times the population and area of Iraq. We were told that war with Iraq would cost $1.7 billion and be paid for by oil revenues. To date, the cost has been one thousand times that. Yes, one thousand. Several thousand Americans have died, uncountable Iraqis, and tens of thousands of American soldiers maimed for life. The numbers of Iraqis are again uncountable.

I don’t think we can prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, and even if we could, the fact that nuclear material has been smuggled out of former Soviet republics, that Pakistan, India, China, Israel and North Korea are among those countries with nuclear weapons, to loose the dogs of war on Iran is beyond my comprehension.

Elections matter. Too many Americans sat out the last one because Mr. Obama hadn’t fixed everything that the recession and two wars he inherited had caused. Further, Mr. Obama is faced with a rapidly changing world that America no longer can control with troops, CTF (that would be carrier task forces), or bombing. Further, he is being asked to cut spending, taxes, and destroy the environment in the name of jobs, which need to be different from ones we have had before, because the world is changing rapidly.

It’s difficult to walk out of the Jewish Museum in Berlin without realizing that the world has been at war a good deal of its history with a few relatively short periods of peace. Peace in our time will sooner or later devolve into war. At least two thousand years of history support this contention.

Unleashing the dogs of war immolated Dresden. It did the same to Tokyo, where fire killed more people than Hiroshima. The dogs of war, once unleashed, are not controllable. One might be extremely cautious before letting them loose.

One might even visit Dresden.

Tags:General writing
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IT HAPPENED; THEREFORE, IT CAN HAPPEN AGAIN

March 19, 2015

In Berlin’s German Resistance Museum, there is a picture of Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, one of many intellectuals persecuted by the Nazis in the early 1930s. Dr. Hirschfeld had done much research about homosexuality, concluding such was a variant of human sexuality. Note the word “variant.” It means different, like red hair is a variant of human hair color. Or skin color. Or ability to do different things. Said another way, some people’s brains are wired differently when it comes to sexuality. They just are. I am straight, but I didn’t choose it. I just was. It is sort of like how I deal with math. I am good at it. I just am.

The rise of Nazism was due to many factors, the upshot’s being that a group of thugs took over one of the premier civilizations of the world, blaming certain groups, instilling fear, the need for law and order, and of course creating jobs. My late father-in-law, a physician, had to learn German in medical school, because the important scientific literature was written in German. His son-in-law, also a physician, sees disturbing parallels between 1930s Germany and the current US Congress, especially when it comes to instilling fear, racism, sexism and being boorish.

Dr. Hirschfeld was heir to the scientific tradition of Germany. What he had discovered was astounding, given it was 80 years ago. Unfortunately, on 10 May 1933, twenty-five thousand books were burned in Berlin, right across from the university. These were not just novels, they were classics, books about many different subjects, and … Dr. Hirschfeld’s work. Before a book was thrown into the fire, the author and the title were screamed aloud. I say screamed, because I believe with a fire and a mob, one would have to scream. But I could be wrong.

Dr. Hirschfeld could have been wrong, too. I suspect, however, he would have been the first to admit it, had someone discovered compelling evidence to dispute his findings. Good scientists use terms like “margin of error,” “confidence intervals,” and “uncertainty,” which many lay people take to mean that scientists don’t know what they are talking about. In fact, the absence of those terms from scientific discussion is a statement of ignorance. If we taught basic statistics well, we might be able to have a citizenry who understood how we can make inferences about quantities that may never be exactly known, such as the state of the Earth’s atmosphere, and draw conclusions about our climate, to name one.

The SA did not know much about science, either, and felt intellectuals, the Jews, gypsies, and infirm did not belong in their society. That is why they burned books. They burned truth, they burned what might not have been truth, but an attempt to find it. They burned the creations of human beings. I might not agree with such creations, like those that Glenn, Rush, Ted Cruz, James Inhofe, and Pat Robertson; indeed, I think most of what they write are outright lies. But I wouldn’t burn their books. I don’t buy them, I hope others don’t, and that the paper is eventually recycled into something better. Indeed, in a capitalist society, we would call that the “market forces.”

Robertson himself recently likened being gay, or homosexual, as Dr. Hirshfeld would have stated, to being a drug abuser. Robertson is wrong. He needs to retire, disappear from public view, and the media ought to stop covering what he says. His time is over, not because he is old, but because he is rigid, wrong, won’t consider other ideas, and spews venom. He has no proof that homosexuality is a choice. Jimmy Carter is 6 years older and still writes thoughtful books.

Dr. Hirschfeld died two years later in Nice, in exile. At least he got out of Germany before the War, when he otherwise would have ended up in one of the concentration camps and have been murdered.

Notice the word “murdered.” The German Resistance, Holocaust, and Jewish Museums use the word “ermordert,” rather than “gassed,” “shot,” “starved to death,” “jumped off a cliff without a parachute,” or “died from tuberculosis/typhus.” They don’t mince words. Those who died were murdered. They were forcibly deported, after losing their livelihood, their possessions, their families, their health, and finally their lives. Walk the streets of Berlin or Dresden, and occasionally you see a “Stolperstein,” a small sidewalk marker, where somebody or several somebodies once lived. These people were deported to a concentration camp and then murdered a year, two years later. Don’t believe me? Here are four. Two were my age.

So was lost the truth, the potential, and in Dr. Hirschfeld’s case, work that was a minimum of 80 years ahead of his time. The clock is still running, however, for even today, a majority of those in Congress feel homosexuality is sinful, that love between two people of the same sex is wrong, can be changed, and is a choice. As recently as 1970, the American Psychiatric Association considered homosexuality a disease.

Dr. Hirschfeld was a great man who never lived to see the fruits of his labors. Had the Nazis not intervened, who knows how the idea of homosexuality would have interpreted in the civilized world. Perhaps nothing would have changed; somehow, I think it might have been a lot better for both gays and straights.

Maybe. Maybe not. Jews have been persecuted on and off for their entire history. What I do know is that I learned something the day I stood over the spot where the books were burned, and two days later, when I toured the Resistance Museum and read about Dr. Hirschfeld. From this great man, I learned a better term than “homosexuality” or “gay”. I learned “variability of human sexuality.” I also learned that we often don’t live to discover whether we were right. It’s OK. We tried, and we honestly tried to advance human knowledge. That is enough.

What isn’t enough is we can’t rid ourselves of the enemies of truth. They wrap themselves in the Flag, a Holy Book, their interpretation of religion, and their ideology. They bully others by loudness, by threats, by carrying out threats, and by joining with likeminded others. They have always been out there, and they always will be.

By the way, if you think human sexuality doesn’t vary, read Dan Savage’s column sometime. In the Eugene Weekly it is called “Savage Love.” As ex-Navy guy, I thought I had heard of everything to do with human sexuality.

Oh, how wrong I was.

“It happened, therefore it can happen again. That is the core of what we are trying to say.” (Primo Levi)

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CHEWING AN APPLE

February 23, 2015

Yesterday, while looking for a pair of walking shoes, I was helped by a saleswoman who chewed an apple the whole time I was there. I know people often need to eat while working. I did it for years. But eating in front of a customer one is helping seems rude. I wondered about her education. It was a good day to wonder, for the Sunday paper had reported that Lane Community College received a “scathing report” during their accreditation. They are accredited, but there is a lot of work that must be done in the near future; a repeat visit is planned.

There are issues that clearly relate to Lane, regarding course structure, how students are evaluated, and a need to establish clearer goals. There are other issues, however, not mentioned in the article, which I think need to be discussed. I wrote a letter to the paper, but after finishing realized I had already used my allotted one letter per calendar month.

I am not an educator, only the son of two. I have, however, taught at a community college and at a for-profit university, leaving the latter, because I thought it intellectually dishonest to pass students in statistics when they had neither the necessary math skills nor adequate time to learn it. Not understanding the slope of a line makes linear regression impossible to learn. 6 E-5 on a calculator is not 6 but 0.00006.

I volunteer at Lane twice weekly tutoring math. Yes, I eat lunch while there, but I put food away if a student needs help. In Arizona, I volunteered in 3 high schools for 9 years, eventually becoming a substitute teacher, because I wasn’t utilized enough as a volunteer. I ate on the job there, too, and I barely had time to use the bathroom. We need volunteers in the schools, but they must be kept busy. Establishing such a system should be a national priority.

At Pima CC in Tucson, 80% of the incoming students flunked the math placement exam. In a high school in an affluent district, I spent two years helping students do “accelerated math.” The euphemism was an attempt to help 10th graders, with elementary school math knowledge, reach standards allowing them to graduate from high school, standards that have since been removed, after first being watered down. We want math fluency; we just don’t want to hold students back from graduating if they don’t have it. One may argue the test wasn’t good, but at least there was a way to evaluate students. Now there is none.

The students I taught needed multiplication tables beside them, which I think should be known by everybody reaching junior high school, let alone 10th grade. I think students should know 8 x 6 or how to divide 3 into 12 without using a calculator. I’m not exaggerating. Each had been passed up the line despite their not knowing basic arithmetic. They got “participation points,” “trying hard” was important, and some of their parents demanded they be allowed to finish high school with their peers who did know these basics. Watch Suze Orman sometime, and it becomes clear what happens when people don’t understand finance.

Community colleges have become de facto high school finishing institutions. I don’t know whether community colleges pass students to the next level—the workplace or a 4 year college—with the skills they need, like making basic change at a cash register.

Or not chewing on an apple when one is helping a customer.

I have three fundamental questions: 1. What are we trying to do? 2. How will we know we did it? 3. What changes can we make that will solve the problem?

Funding tied to number of degrees awarded increases pressure to award degrees. How do we know if the degree is worthwhile? One can pass students up the line, but eventually I want a doctor, a mechanic, a pilot, or a computer specialist who is competent. The piper must be paid. Competence must be definable and proven.

It includes not chewing apples in front of customers.

I don’t believe a four or even a two year stint in higher education is necessary for all. Many important jobs in our service economy don’t require college. Education’s primary role might begin by teaching early and often that complex 21st century problems are not addressed by catchy phrases. We need to grant meaningful degrees, not just count them, teach the myriad skills required today, pay for them, and keep education affordable. Climate change, ocean acidification, immigration, religious fundamentalism, North Korea, Cuba, Iran, competition, environmental degradation, defense, can’t be addressed by “America first,” “boots on the ground,” “I’m not a scientist,” “deport all of them,” “de-regulate,” “let the market do it,” or “allow parents to decide.” None of these and other issues have clear answers.

We need to determine what courses are needed for today’s workforce and for those jobs we believe we will have in the future. In 2045, people will be doing work that today not only doesn’t exist, we can’t even imagine what it will be. Streaming video online, wi-fi and smart phones weren’t things I thought about in 1985. Indeed, the words “streaming” “wi-fi,” and “online” didn’t exist, smart belonged with people, and video was defined in millimeters and called “film”.

How we certify students needs to be changed. We need a required, sensibly structured way to state that an individual is prepared for the next step. These changes will be painful to higher education. We have to pay for this as students and as taxpayers. The debt load is burdensome; people need to learn what is necessary for a skill, which may not require 4 years, or even 2. Stampers don’t need to know Chaucer, not if it is part of their $50,000 student debt at graduation, but they need to know enough math to do finance, enough English to communicate, and enough science, history and geography to be able to vote intelligently. Professional golf management as a major once sounded like a joke, but given the popularity of golf, I’ve reconsidered my position. By the way, learning to reconsider one’s position on a matter should be taught, too.

What are we trying to do? Have an educated populace in the 21st century. What is an educated populace? I don’t know. I offer my thoughts, and if our country were a place where we could discuss complexity with civility, not with talking points and shouting, we might be able to answer this question better.

How will we know we have done it? We need better measurements than we have, ones that will tell us the bitter truth, which we all know exists. We have millions of poorly educated citizens. Let’s neither allow gaming of the system nor get hung up upon punishing schools. The solution will be expensive, requiring money, volunteers, good ideas, but most importantly evaluating students honestly. It will be painful. The truth usually is. We need multiple career pathways to accommodate variability in learning and intelligence.

How do we move forward? Ask the right questions. Then answer them. Honestly.

Tags:General writing, MATH AND MIKE, Philosophy
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Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

DESIGNATED GUN HOLDER

YOU SHOULD HAVE SEEN

THEY’LL GO ELSEWHERE

DE-JADING MYSELF

TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE TRIP OF 2015

WHO NAMED THE STARS?

MOSTLY BY CHANCE

THE DOGS OF WAR

IT HAPPENED; THEREFORE, IT CAN HAPPEN AGAIN

CHEWING AN APPLE

WHAT’S HERE?

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